Mis-heard in Azkaban
by SelkieShore
Summary: Why did Dumbledore never question Sirius' guilt after putting his trust in him, admittedly reluctantly, as the Potters' Secret-Keeper? As canonical events in "Prisoner" draw to a close, Dumbledore examines the past as only he can, remembering a long ago visit to Azkaban... contains some mild violence towards Sirius, with worse implied.
1. Chapter 1

It was the end of a warm afternoon in July. Flies buzzed. Elsewhere in the school - and despite the dampening influence of the Dementors, unseen but sensed beyond the walls - staff and students alike were celebrating the end of Exam Week. An occasional explosion suggested Fred and George Weasley were leading the way in this. But for Albus Dumbledore, alone in his office at the top of the turret staircase, the lengthening sunlight brought only memories, and a vague sense of trouble.

Perhaps it was this bad business with Hagrid's hippogriff, about to be put down for attacking a student - an attack which, knowing the student concerned, had almost certainly been provoked, and which had barely scratched the boy in any case. The verdict had more to do with politics than justice, and it troubled Dumbledore that he had not been able to do anything about that. He had promised to be there for Hagrid while the sentence was carried out, and that was all he could do. Then again, there was a full moon this evening. Much as he tried not to worry, and ashamed as he was to admit it, Dumbledore had been sitting out each full moon in some anxiety for almost a year now. Or perhaps it was simply the Dementors. This was what they did, after all: they forced you to relive the worst times in your life, past griefs, past fears. And past mistakes.

Dumbledore has an uneasy feeling - and it had been growing stronger with every passing week - that he had been party to a very bad mistake indeed. Twelve years ago...

After a while he got up and fetched the Pensieve. It was not his memory. Despite long arguments with the Ministry, back and forth, he had never managed to get permission to interview the prisoner for himself, and in the end Alastor Moody had agreed to go in his place. The man had been incarcerated for months by then. Their story had been the obvious one that Moody wished to question him in connection with an on-going case, hunting down those Death Eaters who were still at large. But even Moody, the already much-respected Auror, had been granted access only on the condition that he was accompanied by a junior official from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He had traveled out to Azkaban with Cornelius Fudge.

He had made the trip solely as a favor to Dumbledore, and on his return he had given Dumbledore his memory of it. Like any memory, it was reliable only up to a point - in this case, Dumbledore suspected, it would have been coloured strongly by Alastor Moody's implacable hatred of anyone associated with the Dark Arts. Moody detested the prisoner, all the more violently for once having liked him. The conviction without trial had not bothered him in the slightest, though Dumbledore had been appalled by it. But for all that, the case had seemed straight-forward enough at the time.

Dumbledore frowned. He had time enough before he had to go down to Hagrid's. If nothing else, it might set his mind at rest if he looked again, reviewed the facts. He leaned forward, letting his mind fall into the Pensieve's bowl...


	2. Chapter 2

They were striding along a corridor in the island prison of Azkaban. Dementors drifted soundlessly, ahead and behind them, and the mad howling and cackling of the in-mates whimpered one cell at a time into cowed silence as the dark figures passed each door.

Dumbledore glanced with interest at the two men beside him. Fudge looked haunted. Moody's grim face gave nothing away, as usual, but he was holding his thigh as he stumped along, and Dumbledore guessed that the presence of the Dementors was making him relive the pain of losing his leg. That was unusual. Dementors tended to aim more for the emotional scars, but with Alastor Moody there probably wasn't much to work with.

They had reached the cell. The door swung outward, and Dumbledore saw a bare, tiled room, a pallet bed in one corner, a latrine bucket in the other, a bowl of untouched food on a low stool by the bed. It was no noisome dungeon. The horror of Azkaban was of a different order from slime-covered walls and torture implements; and no self-respecting rat would have come near the place. Nevertheless, the clamminess which was so inseparable a part of it - and which had little if anything to do with the natural weather - was palpable. It was as if the fog had come into the room.

A thin man in prisoner's robes was standing leaning with his head against the wall beside the tiny window, although there was nothing to see beyond the mist-wet bars but more fog. He did not look up as they trooped in, but Dumbledore thought he stood a little tauter, like one steadying himself for an ordeal. Then a Dementor seized a handful of his long hair and pulled his head around to face Moody.

Dumbledore was shocked - far more so than he had been the first time he shared this memory. The prisoner's face was familiar: it had scarcely been out of the newspapers for a year. But this memory came from a time when it was twelve years younger, more like the arrogant, likeable boy whom Dumbledore had taught in school. Worse, it was the face of a man who had not yet learned to cope with the horror of his daily existence in Azkaban. Those eyes would acquire a hardened, shuttered look in the months and years to come, but for now they were like looking into an abyss.

Not for the first time, Dumbledore found himself disgusted that the side he supported, undeniably the Good Side, could still employ anything so repugnant as a Dementor. The faint air of defiance in the prisoner's stance at the window had oozed out of him at the creature's touch. He was cringing away from it, grey-faced, and Dumbledore wondered what most dreadful passages of a dreadful life he was being forced to relive. He was not left wondering for long.

"Please, no... I've killed them..." whispered Sirius Black. "I've killed James and Lily..."

"You - let him go," said Moody. The Dementor released Black's hair - it seemed reluctant to do so - and he slid slowly down the wall, his hands and feet scrabbling on the tiles as he tried to press his spine further into the corner, like a dog that fears a beating. But this was Moody's memory, and because Moody had not noticed it, Dumbledore did not see how his fingernails had grown to skittering claws...

Black himself seemed to take strength from something, though, and in a few moments he was able to leer up at them from under his tangle of dark hair and speak in his usual tones, quietly contemptuous. "Hello Alastor. And Mr Fudge. Got a message from that troll's arse Barty Crouch about the date of my trial?"

"Shut up," said Moody.

But Cornelius Fudge was already responding nervously, his voice somewhat higher than usual in the echoing cell. "Well, er, Black, we've been over this. There are no grounds for conducting a trial. This is a clear-cut case and your, er, your confession - "

"Now listen here, Alastor," Black spoke direct to Moody. "I've confessed nothing. I didn't kill all those Muggles. I didn't even kill -" and the hatred which came into his voice made the waiting Dementors stir hungrily, " - Peter Pettigrew, although the gods know I wanted to - "

"And the Potters?" Moody said harshly. "James Potter trusted you like a brother."

"Yeah. Sometimes we all trust the wrong person." Black closed his eyes. "God, James, I'm sorry..."

"And all the time you were spying on them for You Know Who."

Black looked shocked. "No," he said flatly. "C'mon... Al... You don't believe that."

"Dumbledore believes it," said Cornelius Fudge.

"What?! That's a damn lie - " Suddenly Black was on his feet, such an animal ferocity in his face that Fudge took a step backwards. Much to Dumbledore's surprise - and perhaps to his own - so did Alastor Moody. But the Dementors swirled forward, obscuring the prisoner from view behind a hedge of dark hooded cloaks, and when they drifted outwards he was once again crouched shivering on the floor, with one arm half-raised to cover his head.

Fudge cleared his throat. "Yes, well, we're not here to discuss the Potters. Where - "

"I am," said Moody. He limped forward, contempt twisting his scarred face like a bad taste in the mouth as he bent low to look into the prisoner's face. Dumbledore guessed he was furious at what had just happened, at his own moment of fear, and that he was loathing the prisoner if possible even more thoroughly than he had before. For all that, even in Moody's memory, the man was pitiful. "Make your mind up, Boy. You just told us you killed them. You betrayed James Potter to You Know Who."

"No!" Black said desperately. And then in a whisper, "Yes... or as good as... I didn't mean to..."

Moody slapped him - flat-handed and insulting. Then quietly, almost gently, he asked the one question which would matter to Dumbledore. "Why?"

"... because..." Black shook his head miserably. He had not reacted to the blow, and Dumbledore had the impression he no longer saw any of them. The Dementors had not backed away very far. They stood in a semi-circle around the hunched figure of their prisoner on the floor of the cell, and Sirius Black was alone with his ghosts. "... I was afraid... He could have _made_ me talk... " It came out as the merest breath of a whisper. "I thought... only sensible..."

"Sensible ?!" Moody bellowed across him, "Why you snivelling piece of filth -"

"I didn't know - "

"Don't give me that!"

"... it was my fault... _Prongs_ ..."

"You disgust me." Moody nodded at Fudge, who was looking distinctly sick. "Let's go. We're wasting our time here. And I need a bath."

The memory faded...


	3. Chapter 3

Dumbledore surfaced, gravely troubled. Not much time had passed. A spell of Weasley manufacture had drifted in through the open window and formed itself into an unflattering cartoon of Professor Snape, done in ribbons of lurid purple smoke. As Dumbledore watched, unamused, it intoned "Potions... sucks" before vanishing with a fizzle of sparks and a smell. But the sun had barely moved. Dust motes danced down a strong shaft of it to where Fawkes the phoenix sat half dozing on his perch; and then Fawkes opened an amber eye and fixed Dumbledore with his intelligent gaze. As if sensing his owner's mood, the phoenix whistled one chiming note -

- bringing another memory, Dumbledore's own this time, un-asked for yet clear as a bell across the years: of just such an evening as this, golden July, with the sunlight streaming across the panelling and Fawkes a gilded statue, while he, Dumbledore, seated at this very desk, watched with pride and worry as James Potter wore a path in the carpet with his distracted pacing. "I can't let you do it. It's too dangerous -"

And the young man sprawled in well-feigned nonchalance in that chair just over there by the empty fireplace had winked - absolutely winked - at Dumbledore, and said, "I don't think you're getting a choice, Mate." Which was when Dumbledore had realised he was terrified.

He had a right to be. Any sane man in his position would have been terrified, and he was hiding it superbly; so that Dumbledore, who had always prided himself on his judgment, had simply smiled sadly back and shaken his head, dazzled like all the rest of them by Sirius Black.

Was that why he had not questioned things sufficiently later on? When the Potters' home was standing in burned-out ruins, and the memory of that misplaced wink became a callous taunt. Because in spite of the boy's youth, his arrogance, his family background... in spite of all his own misgivings, Dumbledore had agreed to Black as the Potters' Secret Keeper, and if Black was guilty then so was he, for being taken in. To have wondered if Black could possibly be innocent would have been a kind of clutching at excuses, of running away.

So he had written forceful letters to the Ministry regarding the treatment of prisoners in Azkaban - letters which had gone unanswered - and had argued for the right of even the foulest crimes to be fairly tried. But he had not doubted for one moment that this particular prisoner was guilty.

Which was why it came as a shock to realise that given that decision over again, there was every chance he would be taken in a second time by Sirius Black. Despite everything he had just seen in the Pensieve, what remained was summer sunlight, and that glow of almost paternal pride.

One thing was certain. It was pity beyond measure that he had not succeeded in visiting Azkaban for himself. If only Alastor could have kept his temper under better control! Black had been barely coherent by the end: what was that he had been mumbling when Moody interrupted him? "I was afraid he could have made me talk. I thought it was only sensible I didn't know..."

"God, Boy," said Dumbledore, appalled.

Until that moment he would have said that Severus Snape was the bravest man it had been his privilege to train - and Gilderoy Lockhart the most stupid. But how could those words possibly mean what they appeared to? Dumbledore himself had sworn on oath that Black was the Secret Keeper, and after all, who else was there?

Whatever the truth it would have to wait. It had waited twelve years already, and Hagrid needed him now. It was almost time for the hippogriff's execution.

Dumbledore put the matter neatly to one side to be considered again, soon and very carefully, and hurried towards the spiral staircase. Before he was halfway down his mind was already busy with other things. But he muttered once into his beard as he went, "Sirius, you fool. You poor, courageous _fool_."


End file.
